Some years ago, reviewing a novel by Robert Coover, Wilfrid Sheed said that "not to read it because you don't like baseball is like not reading Balzac because you don't like boarding houses." I bring this up because I am entirely innocent of race tracks. And yet: Not to read Dick Francis because you don't like horses is like not reading Dostoyevsky because you don't like God. Baseball, boarding houses, race tracks and God are subcultures. A writer has to have a subculture to stand up on….

What distinguishes "Reflex" from other Dick Francis fictions is its multitude of plots, all of them connecting, as if the artist were a spider with galactic aspirations for the latest web. What distinguishes Philip from previous reluctant heroes in Dick Francis fictions is that he is as much a photographer as he is a jockey, and we learn as much about...